out the subsequent
history of a custom, belief, or rite so arrested. As a survival in a
state of arrested development, a custom or belief is observable
throughout its later history. All it does is to decay, and decay
slowly, and each stage of decay may oftentimes be discovered. On the
other hand, if no arrest of development had taken place there would
have been no survival and no decay. The custom or belief which is not
arrested by an opposing culture becomes a part of the religion or of
the institutions of the nation, and the history of its development
becomes, as a rule, lost in the general advance of religion and
politics--custom develops into law, belief develops into religion,
rite develops into ceremonial, and tradition ceases to be the force
which keeps them alive. The two classes of custom and belief thus
contrasted are of different value to the student. The one is important
because it contains the germs and goes back to the origin of existing
institutions. The other is important because, having been arrested by
a strong opposing force, unable to destroy it altogether, it remains
as evidence of custom and belief at the time of its arrestment. It
will be seen at once how far this evidence may take us. It stretches
back into the remotest past. It survives in the stage at which it was
arrested, not of course in the form in which it then appeared, but in
the decayed form which years of existence beneath the ever-opposing
forces of the established civilisation must have brought about.

These opposing forces can be detected in working order. What can be
more indicative of a dual system of belief than the cry of an old
Scottish peasant when he came to worship at the sacred well?--"O Lord,
Thou knowest that well would it be for me this day an I had stoopit my
knees and my heart before Thee in spirit and in truth as often as I
have stoopit them afore this well. But we maun keep the customs of our
fathers." It appears over and over again in the lives of early
Christian saints who were only just parting from a living pagan faith.
Thus St. Bega was the patroness of St. Bees in Cumberland, where she
left a holy bracelet which was long an object of profound veneration;
and in a prefatory statement by the compiler of a small collection of
her miracles, written in the twelfth century, we learn among other
things that whosoever forswore himself upon her bracelet swiftly
incurred the heaviest punishment of perjury or a speedy dea